Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Summer's here. You know what that means.

In Washington, summer means fruit flies. Gross. They descend upon our house in hordes. Fruit flies mean spiders. As I have been running in the mornings, I have broken up hundreds of spider webs that form in the night between the trees. You are welcome, later runnners, hikers, and bikers. I cleared the trails for you.
Summer also means blackberry picking,

blackberry eating,

swimsuit weather,

sidewalk chalk,

and lots and lots of playing outside.

We have also done our share of canning this year. So far we have made peach jam, peach preserves, and applesauce. I was disappointed to learn that 38 lbs. of apples turned into only nine quarts of applesauce. I estimate that we need at least 25 quarts for a year, so we might make more. Eloise and Jared were excellent helpers with peaches. Eloise loved to peel them, and Jared loved using a butter knife to cut them into microscopic fragments to put in the jars. Benjamin loved to eat them.

Todd had the week off of work starting August 20, so I was able to get more canning done, and we had some great weekday adventures before the weather got really wet this week. Summer is slipping away, but the fruit flies remain. I'm ready for the fruit fly part of summer to be over.